Desert Hearts

Chapter One Kara Swenson Peace and quiet. I’d almost forgotten what that was like. June had come and gone, and July was almost over — always a busy season here in Sedona, despite the scorching desert heat. The crowds had thinned out a little now that the monsoon storms had arrived in earnest, but the shop was still crazy-busy. I knew I should be glad, times being what they were, but every once in a while, I began to wonder just how many people out there could really be that interested in aliens and UFOs. Maybe one day I’d figure out why those people found themselves compelled to buy an alien plushie or a paperback copy of Flying Saucers and Science before leaving Sedona and heading home to Chicago or Omaha or Portland or wherever else they came from. Even now, I felt as if I should be back at the shop, since Wednesday nights were usually reserved for conducting inventory or general tidying up. But Kiki had shooed me away, saying, “Even big sisters need a night off every once in a while.” True, it had felt good to come home, kick off my shoes, pour myself a glass of chilled pinot grigio — already it was too hot for anything heavier — and turn on the television, but after an hour or so of that, the pleasures of a solitary evening had begun to pall. I turned off the TV, and Gort, my wolfish German shepherd/Keeshond mix, turned an inquiring eye toward me and wagged his tail a few times. He’d already had two walks that day, but maybe what I needed right then was some fresh air, especially now that the sun had been down for a while and the air had cooled somewhat. Only a sip or two remained of the pinot grigio, so I finished it off and set the glass down on the coffee table. “Guess what, Gort? It’s your lucky day.” Gort’s tail thumped against the floor again, and he scrambled to his feet and let out a low whine, dark eyes fixed on the side table where I kept his leash. “I know, I know.” I stood and retrieved the leash, then clipped it onto his collar. The drawer was also a repository for the used grocery bags Kiki and I affectionately referred to as “poopie bags,” and I grabbed one of those as well and stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. My house keys with the attached mini flashlight went into my other pocket; there weren’t many streetlights out here on the edge of town. Not that I ever worried about walking alone after dark. I’d lived here in Sedona for almost twenty years, in the house that had been my grandparents’ and had come to me after my grandfather died some six years earlier. The store had been his, too. I’d gotten the whole kit and caboodle, as Kiki liked to say without a trace of resentment. True, she hadn’t inherited the house or the store, but that didn’t mean our grandfather hadn’t taken care of her. On Kiki’s twenty-first birthday, she’d gotten her share of the inheritance: a hundred thousand dollars. And, despite gloomy prognostications to the contrary from some of our circle of friends, she hadn’t spent much of it yet. Gort pulled me out the front door, tail wagging. I didn’t bother to lock up — I’d only brought the keys because of the flashlight attached to the chain. Even though the sun had been down for more than an hour, the temperature hovered in the mid-eighties. I’d had always loved the way the warm nighttime breezes played with my hair and flowed gently over the bare skin of my arms. The stars burned overhead so brightly, it seemed as if I could almost reach out and touch them. No moon yet tonight, though, and I flicked on the little flashlight and let it guide me past the end of the cul-de-sac and out onto the trail that wound around the edge of my subdivision. Snakes and scorpions didn’t worry me too much, since I tended to wear jeans and hiking boots even on days like today when temperatures hit the upper nineties, but I still conscientiously ran the flashlight’s beam over the path ahead of me, just in case. Gort lifted his leg against a manzanita bush, then tugged me forward. This being Sedona, I knew all too well that there were other things — things not of this world — hiding in the darkness of the desert, but sightings were rare in this part of town. No, you had to head out toward Boynton or up Schnebly Road to see the stuff that would really make your hair curl. Or sometimes you just had it dropped right in your store. That had happened when Persephone O’Brien showed up four months ago, asking for help. Of course, it was Kiki and the rest of the gang who got to be out in the field while I held down the fort at the store, but still, the crazy goings-on in Secret Canyon and the rescue of Paul Oliver, the famous ufologist, had proved that all the years of tracking reports of alien movements and UFO activity in the canyons surrounding Sedona weren’t exactly pie in the sky. So to speak. And now Persephone and Paul were here permanently, having decided to relocate from Los Angeles to Sedona. It was a good place for a psychic and a UFO researcher to end up, and the two were so blatantly happy that I couldn’t really begrudge them their good fortune, but…. But nothing, I told myself, and tugged on Gort’s leash when he seemed a little too interested in a spiky yucca plant. Being the well-behaved dog that he was, he trotted back to the center of the path without arguing. “Good dog,” I said, and he panted, the white teeth of his doggy smile flashing at me in the darkness. Well, Gort loved me anyway. I told myself not to be silly, that self-pity didn’t do anyone any good. So I was going through the mother of all dry spells in my personal life. That had happened to better women than me, and brooding over it sure wasn’t going to do me any good. Besides, everything else was going great — I owned my house and the store free and clear, had a great set of friends — Michael and Persephone and Paul and Lance — At the thought of Lance, though, my mind skidded to a stop. Yes, he was a good friend. Too bad friendship wasn’t really what I wanted from him. Gort whined then, and began to tug the leash back toward the house. I stared down at him, a little surprised. Normally, he’d try every trick in the book to extend our walks, and we’d barely been out of the house for ten minutes. “Okay, you crazy mutt,” I said, and allowed him to pull me homeward. After all, I’d come out here for the dog. Otherwise, I would have just poured myself another glass of wine and luxuriated in the central air conditioning I’d installed a few years earlier. My grandparents had always made do with a whole-house swamp cooler, but the A/C made the place feel so much better. As I approached the front walk to the house, a rectangle of yellow light shone down the path, illuminating the stone pavers. What the hell? The front door stood open, allowing anyone standing on the walkway to see straight down the hall and into my living room. No, I hadn’t locked the door, but I had most definitely made sure it was firmly shut. Just the wind, I told myself, or maybe you thought the lock had caught, but it really didn’t. Gort let out a warning bark, followed by a low growl deep in his throat. When I looked down, I saw the fur along the back of his neck was bristling, and his luxuriant tail — definitely inherited from his Keeshond parent — had curled itself tightly against his back. The hair on my own neck prickled a little, but I forced myself to move forward. This was my house, dammit, and although I’d been stupid enough to go out without taking my cell phone with me, I wasn’t about to stand there and shiver and shake on my own front stoop. The houses on this street had fairly big lots, but they weren’t so far apart that my neighbors wouldn’t hear me if I screamed. Besides, a seventy-five-pound dog was pretty good protection. Wrapping the fingers of my left hand around Gort’s collar, I moved forward and into the entryway. Almost at once, I saw a set of dusty footprints on the gleaming Saltillo tile, and I swallowed. It wasn’t too late to turn around. I could stop, inch my way back outside, and run like hell to the Martinez’s place next door. Then I saw him. At least, I thought it was a him. From this angle, it was difficult to tell, because he lay prostrate in the middle of the living room, half of him on the Navajo rug and the other half sprawled across the tile floor. Gort growled again, but there was the faintest hint of a whine in the sound, as if he didn’t know how he was supposed to react. Well, that makes two of us. I moved slowly toward the stranger, barely daring to breathe. As I drew closer to him, I saw he wore some sort of tattered jumpsuit that might once have been black but was now a dingy, rusty shade of dark gray. It was torn in a dozen places and spattered with dirt and dark stains that might be dried blood. And, to put it mildly, he reeked of stale sweat. He must have been unconscious. Otherwise, he would have been able to hear the hammering of my heart. Perfect. Just a few steps more to the dining room, where I’d left my cell phone lying on the table. All I’d have to do was call 911, and somebody from Sedona P.D. would come over to take the intruder away. That was the most reasonable course of action. But something prevented me from taking those last steps. I stood there, staring down at him, and then he rolled over, gazing up at me with wide, pale eyes from within a sun-ravaged face so smudged with grime, I couldn’t get a clear idea of what he actually looked like. One hand reached out feebly toward my shoe and fell short. “Please,” he whispered. “Please help me.” Lance Rinehart He didn’t know why he’d agreed to meet Michael Lightfoot and Paul Oliver so they could go out to Boynton Canyon and observe the orbs. True, Paul hadn’t seen them yet — he’d been too busy giving lectures and writing his next book — but that didn’t mean the scientist really needed someone to hold his hand while he went out to the canyon. Kara could have given him a map. Hell, he could’ve looked it up on the internet. Besides, coming out here after everything that had gone on at Secret Canyon made no sense. Persephone had said on more than one occasion that she hadn’t sensed the presence of any more of the human/alien hybrids, but that didn’t mean much. She’d pulled off a pretty good trick at the underground base, destroying the hybrids with one fell swoop, but when it came to hints and hunches, she was still just as fallible as any other psychic. At least she hadn’t come along on this excursion. Lance wondered sourly how Paul was willing to give up even a few minutes of bliss with his new bride, but apparently she was accompanying Linda Santos, a member of the local Mutual UFO Network group — MUFON for short — to a seminar on UFO field data collecting. Persephone had been making noises about wanting to assist Paul with his investigations, so going to the seminar was a logical start. Anyway, it was just the three of them out here in Boynton, sitting in the warm darkness and looking for orbs. Lance had seen them plenty of times, but even he wasn’t quite able to brush them off as a commonplace. Paul had brought along a fancy SLR. Whether or not he’d be able to capture anything with the thing was a crap shoot, given the uncertain nature of the orbs, but you never knew. “Set off the flash,” Lance told him as they settled themselves on a large, flat rock. The other man raised an eyebrow, but he lifted the camera as instructed and pushed the button. A bright strobe illuminated the little dell where they had paused to take their observations. Tiny points of golden light glittered in the air all around them. It looked as if someone had shaken a child’s snow globe and then shone a flashlight on it. A skeptic would have remarked that the dust could have simply been suspended bits of particulate matter…except that all those gleaming specks hung still in the air, not moving, even though a warm breeze rustled through the branches of the manzanita bushes around them.